


Internal Controls and Cost Analysis

by sqbr



Category: XOXO Droplets (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-16 15:44:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20859026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sqbr/pseuds/sqbr
Summary: Post-canon fluff about being miserable and hating everything.





	Internal Controls and Cost Analysis

**Author's Note:**

> So this is theoretically the first chapter in a longer Pran/Jeremy/JB fic, but I don't know if I'll end up writing the rest of it, and I think it works ok as a little stand alone character piece. Currently it's mostly just about Jeremy, with a little of his relationship with JB in the background.
> 
> Mental and physical illness are moderately significant themes, and while nobody is suicidal in this fic, they talk and joke about suicidal feelings. There's also brief mentions of fatphobia, and some less than competent doctors.
> 
> [Text message skin by CodenameCarrot and La_Temperanza](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6434845).

For a moment Jeremy thought he was looking at himself. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the huddled figure sleeping in the seat next to him. All he could make out was pale features hidden under shaggy green hair, and a thick blanket pulled roughly over dark clothing. It was like looking at a doppelgänger.

As the fog of sleep cleared from his mind, Jeremy realised that the blanket had tacky skulls printed on it, and the hair had black roots. He could hear JB in his head saying _Plus doppelgängers don't exist, you nerd._

Whatever. It shouldn't be a surprise that someone else had realised that back here against the coat rack was the best part of the lecture theatre for taking a nap. Having two of them back here pretending to be overcoats increased the odds of being noticed by the annoyingly diligent lecturer. Jeremy opened up his laptop and tried to look attentive.

He was in the middle of deciding how much to transcribe of a question about how to help businesses avoid paying tax, when he heard a vague rustle from the adjacent seat. An accented voice mumbled "Hey. How much I miss?"

Jeremy glanced over at the yawning student. He still couldn't tell if they were a man or a woman, but they were definitely Asian, and notably round. Not much of a doppelgänger at all, then.

"About twenty minutes."

"Damn. Can I look at your notes?" They peered hopefully at Jeremy's laptop.

"No," said Jeremy, going back to typing. "Just read the notes online."

"It's not the same." Their voice had taken on a pouting tone. Ugh.

"Well neither is reading my notes." Jeremy turned his laptop so the annoying student couldn't read it, and started typing more heavily.

"I know. But it's...aiiii..." There was a soft thump. Jeremy turned to look at them- had they fallen asleep _mid sentence_? Even Jeremy didn't do that. And now that he paid attention, he noticed they were shivering slightly under their blanket.

"You seem pretty sick," said Jeremy, when they woke up again a few minutes later. "You should go home or see a doctor."

The student pulled their blanket tighter around themselves. "The doctor said I just need to lose weight or take anti-depressants." Jeremy felt the faintest stirrings of sympathy in his shrivelled black heart. 

"Being fat doesn't make you fall asleep mid sentence."

They sniffed in self pity. "Tell that to the doctor." 

"Whatever. Just go home."

"And miss the rest of today's lectures?" They sat up a little straighter, revealing themselves to be slightly taller than Jeremy. "I've missed too many lectures already. And it's not like I'll be any better tomorrow." 

Jeremy moved himself a little further away along the desk. Sympathy was overrated. "So you're just going to expose the rest of us to your awful sleeping sickness?"

"Doctor said it's not contagious."

"Yeah, and they're obviously incompetent. Go away. I don't want to catch whatever it is you've got."

"You know, you're a real..." They started wobbling, but managed to stay awake this time. "If I leave, will you let me look at your notes, and tell me if they announce anything important?"

"No," said Jeremy. "Then I'd be exposing myself to more of your germs."

"You're using a laptop. Send me an email." 

"No."

The student leaned towards him, and coughed pointedly. "It's the best way to get rid of me."

Not for the first time in his life, Jeremy wished he wasn't such a pushover. "Ugh. Fine. Whatever."

They grinned. "Great. My name's Lim, by the way." To Jeremy's horror, they started reaching for his laptop. "Let me type in my email address..."

Jeremy pulled the laptop protectively towards himself. "Write it down and I'll copy it. I don't want you infecting my keyboard."

"Sure," said Lim. "Thanks, uh..."

"Jeremy."

"Thanks, Jeremy. Your reluctant help is much appreciated. I'd shake your hand but you'd probably want to cut it off."

Jeremy shuddered. "Basically."

Lim gathered all their things and made their way out of the lecture theatre on wobbly legs, and Jeremy went back to taking notes. For a moment he thought about making them deliberately bad, out of spite, but that would just encourage Lim to come back. 

At lunch he cheered himself up by searching for Lim's symptoms on the internet. Some of the results looked pretty scary for Lim, but most of them weren't contagious. Still, there were a few possibilities that made Jeremy uncomfortable.

When he sent the notes, he added a few questions about Lim's symptoms.

Lim replied with "I'll answer if you give me notes for tomorrow, too. Also for any other Accounting subjects you're doing."

"Seriously? If I figure out what's wrong with you I'd be doing you a favour."

"You're a business student, not a doctor. You just want to make sure I'm not going to give you sleeping sickness :P"

"Maybe. Fine."

It turned out that Lim was experiencing muscle weakness and sleep paralysis, that they were actually a "they", and that the shivering was just a side effect of being from Singapore. Which sounded a lot like being from California, when it came to dealing with what everyone from Illinois apparently considered a "mild Fall". 

"Ok," said Jeremy, after a day of back and forth, "You need to go in for a sleep study, but I think you might have narcolepsy."

"Haha, very funny." This is what happened when you tried to help people.

"Whatever. It's not contagious, which is all I care about. I'm done sending you notes." 

"What? Fuck you!!!!"

_Sigh_.

He'd been considering sending Lim the notes anyway, because he was a weak-ass pushover, but not if they were going to be like that. 

A few hours later he got another email.

"Oh my goodness. I looked up Narcolepsy, and you might be right. You're a genius!"

"I just know how to use a search engine." 

"Thanks Jeremy! I'll keep you posted!"

"Please don't."

He closed the laptop and went to see what he could find in the kitchen for dinner.

* * *

JB  
  
ur such a humanitarian jerebear. Maybe u should be doing medicine not business.  
  


About the only good thing that had come from the hassle with Lim was it had given Jeremy something less boring to talk about with JB than finance lectures and his failed attempts at cooking. Last night he'd somehow managed to burn ramen, and would have eaten it too if Pran hadn't grumpily snatched away the pot and quickly cooked up something decent.

JB  
  
the whole point was to avoid sick people :P  
  
so u say. Did they get better then?  
  
i dont know I stopped reading their emails  
  
haha. ok, enough about you. did you see the selfie I sent you?  
  
maybe  
  
tell me how hot I look  
  


Jeremy was distracted from his attempt to come up with something suitably cutting by the movement in the corner of his eye. "Wow you can actually smile," said Lim, as they tried to look at Jeremy's phone. He frowned and put it into his pocket.

"So who was that on the phone, your girlfriend?" Had Lim always been in this class? There were like ten people, it was weird to think Jeremy hadn't noticed another person with green hair. Weird, but not all that surprising. He tried to connect with the other students as little as possible.

"None of your business," saids Jeremy, flatly. 

"Ooh, boyfriend? Enbyfriend?" 

"None of your business," said Jeremy in the same tone, pointedly opening his laptop. Lim was _much_ bouncier today than they had been before, and thus much more annoying. A kind deed was its own reward, apparently.

"Hmmph," said Lim, opening their own laptop. "Well, if a jerk like you can get _someone_, maybe there's even hope for me."

"Didn't I just save your life?"

"I wouldn't go that far. I guess I do owe you, though. Who knew the solution to my problems was just to take a whole bunch of amphetamines, eh?" 

That got Jeremy's attention. "Uh. That seems like a bad idea."

"These are medically prescribed amphetamines! Totally fine!" Lim grinned. "I mean, I'm still not telling my parents, haha. They freaked out enough when they learned pot is legal here."

"Mmm," said Jeremy.

"Your notes were really useful by the way. I won't even hold it against you that you had to be blackmailed into giving them to me."

"Ok," said Jeremy.

"I forgot to ask for this course's notes, but it's not like I care. I'm training to become an accountant, since when do I need leadership skills? They should be making all the dumb management students study finance, instead of making this nothing course compulsory. Then maybe your country's economy wouldn't be in such a mess. Did you know that-"

"Lim," said Jeremy. "You owe me a favour, right?"

"I guess," said Lim. "Something free, though, since that's all you did for me."

"Just stop talking."

Lim stared at him for a moment and then laughed. "I guess these drugs do make me a little chatty. Fine. It's a deal."

They sat in blissful silence for the rest of the class. Well, not literally blissful: even if Jeremy was capable of feeling bliss, which he wasn't, he still had to deal with being forced to engage in Developing His Interpersonal Communication and Leadership Effectiveness. If he had to answer another discussion question about what personality traits were key to effective leadership he was going to quit business school and become a door repairman. 

But Lim didn't say another word. There was nothing to distract Jeremy from directing his full attention towards the vacuous, jargon-filled gibberish that filled every minute of this pointless course. 

"Hey, Jeremy."

"Go away, Lim," muttered Jeremy, "We had a deal."

"Class is over."

Jeremy blinked himself awake, and looked around the nearly empty room. Damn. 

"Oh. Uh, thanks."

"You know, you seem pretty sick," said Lim. "Maybe you should see a doctor. Or go home."

"Haha. Doctors just tell me to eat more vegetables and take anti-depressants." 

"Sounds about right," said Lim. "Well, good luck with the team building exercise in the forest next week."

"What."

"Look it up on the website," said Lim. "Bye!" And they cheerfully strode out the door.

* * *

The team building exercise was a disaster. Whatever it was they were _supposed_ to be learning, the main thing Jeremy had learned so far was that gym was just as awful in college as it had been in high-school. Maybe even worse: Jeremy was pretty small, but he wasn't especially unfit, and he'd been adequately mediocre at running and hitting balls etc. No-one in high-school gym had asked him to make _decisions_ while covered in _dirt_.

"Come on Jeremy! Should we go right or left?" 

He stared at the ropes in front of the line of students. Left seemed to head towards the exit, but maybe that was a trick. "I don't know." 

"Just pick one." 

The girl at the front of the line had been behind Jeremy during the last round of this awful game, and he still had smears of dirt on his shirt from where she'd clutched onto his arm. All he could think about right now was how much he wanted a shower. He wondered if JB would be jealous, if she knew that strange women had been clutching at her boyfriend. Probably not, chances were she'd just think it was funny. That thought made him feel slightly better about the situation, but not enough to actually fix anything.

"Ugh. _I don't know_. You pick one." He was ruining everything for everyone. Again. This _sucked_.

"I'm literally blindfolded!"

"Just pick right!" said Lim, from further down the line. "If you always pick the same you eventually get to the end." For someone who despised this course as much as Jeremy did, Lim was annoyingly good at it.

"That depends on the topology," said Jeremy.

"I don't care! We're going right!" The girl confidently placed her hands on the right-hand rope and started leading the other students towards the next intersection. 

"Thank god," said the guy behind her. "I'm glad _someone_ is stepping up to lead."

"Yes, well," muttered the girl. "That _is_ the _whole point of this course_." She raised her voice. "All in favour of just going right every time instead of waiting for Jeremy to make a decision, say 'aye'."

There was a chorus of 'aye's. Jeremy snorted in dark amusement. It seemed he'd inspired his team to work together after all.

It was less amusing when he got his mark back for the exercise. 

His marks in general were not as good as he'd have liked them to have been. He was averaging more than a passing grade, but this was only freshman year. If things just got harder from here, what would his marks look like by the end of his degree? And asides from the pointless leadership course, the subjects he was learning now were all things he actually _needed to know_ if he was going to be any good at his job once he graduated. And it was so hard to concentrate. He kept falling asleep or staring off into space, and barely half the concepts really stuck in his brain. 

Instead, his useless brain kept ruminating on Lim's stupid joke. What if there _was_ something wrong with him? No matter how many times he told himself he'd always been like this, a part of him kept insisting _but what if it's something serious this time?_ What if it was multiple sclerosis, or cancer? What if, by not going to the doctor, he was dooming himself to die a long and painful death? 

His apathy probably would have won over his neurosis, like it usually did, except he happened to pass by the college's medical centre when he had a break between classes, and they happened to have a doctor free then and there. _Might as well get this over with,_ he thought. _Then I can work on writing my will._ He didn't actually have much in the way of assets, but it would still be good to make sure Pran got all of them instead of his parents.

After checking Jeremy's blood pressure and telling him to exercise more, the doctor handed Jeremy a familiar questionnaire.

"I don't have depression," said Jeremy. 

"I'm sure you don't," said the doctor. "But it's always good to check."

"Fine," said Jeremy.

He answered honestly about sleeping too much and lacking energy, since that was the whole reason he was there. But he flipped all the other answers. The one time he'd answered one of these questionnaires honestly the doctor had looked at him with horror, and he'd had to suffer through several hours of horribly awkward therapy as a fake-smiling child therapist asked a bunch of invasive questions then tried to persuade his parents to put him on anti-psychotics. It had been excruciating, and just made him more miserable. 

Anyway, he found it hard to believe that anyone out there _honestly_ picked "I never feel like I'd be better off dead." Even normal people noticed it sometimes, surely. 

"You know what, Jeremy," said the doctor. "I don't think there's anything wrong with you beyond being a young man living away from home for the first time." He gave Jeremy a fatherly smile. "The homesickness will get easier with time. I'd like to do some blood tests to be sure, but-" 

"That's ok, I don't need blood tests," said Jeremy. His parents had already gotten him tested for basically everything, and needles were the _worst_. That and he didn't trust the competence of any doctor who'd diagnose him with _homesickness_.

"How about this, then," said the doctor. "Here's a prescription for anti-depressants. They might knock your brain back into shape." 

Jeremy had to stop himself rolling his eyes. "Um. How will anti-depressants stop me sleeping all the time?"

"Brains are strange and mysterious creatures! Like women, am I right, eh?"

"Ehhh," said Jeremy. To avoid making eye contact with the doctor he actually read the prescription. "Uh. I tried this before, it just gave me a rash." His parents had stopped hassling him to try antidepressants after that, thank God. Because he _didn't have depression_. People with depression wanted to be happy, and failed. Jeremy simply knew the world was awful, and accepted it.

"Oh," said the doctor. "I've never heard of it doing that before! How about this then. It doesn't generally cause side effects, and is also good for daytime sleepiness." 

"Sure," said Jeremy, who mostly just wanted to be gone. This had been a terrible idea.

On the train home Jeremy looked up the medication on his phone, and discovered it could not only cause a rash, but also seizures, bleeding, and suicidal thoughts. So much for 'no side effects'. It _had_ been known to help with daytime sleepiness, but knowing Jeremy's luck he'd be the one person in 10 million who died of kidney failure or whatever. He put the prescription in a drawer.

A few weeks later, when he failed a finance quiz after falling asleep in the middle of it, he took the prescription to a pharmacy and got it filled. 

"Apparently these can make people suicidal," he said to Pran, as he took the first pill. "So apologies in advance if you have to clean up my corpse, I guess."

"You said they were _anti_-depressants," said Pran, not looking up from his drawing. He'd also been bugged to take antidepressants at various times, in his case by his grandparents, but Pran had just sat back and let his dad rant back at them about the evils of Big Pharma and Medicating Away Pran's Artistic Soul etc. Luckily Pran wasn't his dad. 

"I mean it is a very effective way to stop being depressed." Pran looked up and frowned. "Which I'm not going to do. God. Don't worry so much." Jeremy had often thought about the appeal of death in the abstract, but he'd never felt any compulsion to speed up his inevitable demise. That would involve doing something to actively change his situation for the better, which had never been Jeremy's strong point.

"If you kill yourself I'll tell your parents your final words were about how much you love them," said Pran. "And leave your body on the street for the rats."

"Ok," said Jeremy, with a smile. "Thanks."

**Author's Note:**

> So my train of thought when writing this fic:  
-it would be cute to see Jeremy and Pran living together post-canon and maybe forming some sort of poly thing with MC. Probably Jeremy POV, I'm not sure I could get properly inside the head of Pran or JB.  
-Obviously before I write any of it I need to do a bunch of research about the details of attending business school, that is definitely what everyone wants from XOXO Droplets fic. Maybe there's a business school in Chicago, since that's the only place I've been to in the US other than Disneyland and the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio.  
-Ooh, this website says the US's best business school is in Chicago, sweet.  
-*reads website for Chicago Booth Business School* *[imagines how much Jeremy would hate it](http://theboothexp.com/2019/01/leadership-beyond-lead/#more-6948)* :D :D :D


End file.
